Supporting Educators to Support Children with Maladaptive Behaviours within the Early Childhood Educational Context.

INTERVENTION: The intervention consists of a professional learning (PL) package, coupled with in‐residence mentoring to embed practices into the everyday practices of early childhood educators. The intervention will be delivered by an early childhood teacher/researcher with over 20 years of experience teaching early childhood education and 7 years of experience in research. The professional learning will consist of 7 monthly face‐to‐face sessions of up to 5 hours each duration. The in‐residence mentoring will occur in between PL sessions, for approximately 3 to 4 hours each. It is expected that the intervention will begin in late September 2022 and finish in April 2023. The PL will be facilitated with early childhood educators ‐ the PL will be facilitated at their head office and the in‐residence mentoring will be facilitated in their own early learning centres. The training modules will comprise of a PowerPoint presentation to share content, interactive activities and video clips to support participants learning. Goal setting and reflective practice will be key components throughout the training modules and in‐residence mentoring. Participants will have asynchronous access to a Padlet for additional resources related to the module content. It is expected that each module will be presented twice in a one‐week period to enable all participating educators to attend (relieving multiple educators from face‐to‐face teaching is currently limited due to workforce shortages). It is expected that each session will comprise of a maximum 6 participants and 1 facilitator. Attendance will be recorded. The professional learning has been designed specifically for this study. The professional learning will consist of the following topics: *Children's brains, behaviour and learning K CONDITION: Maladaptive behaviours; ; Maladaptive behaviours Mental Health ‐ Other mental health disorders PRIMARY OUTCOME: Change in children's self‐regulation assessed using the Preschool Situational Assessment Toolkit (PRSIST) assessment. [Baseline, mid‐intervention (18 weeks post‐intervention commencement) and post‐intervention (2 weeks post‐intervention completion).] SECONDARY OUTCOME: Change in the quality of the educator‐child relationship as measured by the Student Teacher Relationship Scale (STRS).[Baseline and post‐intervention (2 weeks post‐intervention completion).] Changes in quality of early learning environment as measured by the Sustained Shared Thinking & Emotional Wellbeing scale (SSTEW).[Baseline and post‐intervention (2 weeks post‐intervention completion).] INCLUSION CRITERIA: Children who are enrolled in early education centres in 2022 and 2023, are at least three years old at baseline data collection and are enrolled a minimum of two days per week. Early childhood educators who work face to face with children aged three to five years.